With three
screenplays sold to major companies and a fourth, "Madame
Lupescu," optioned by Imagine
Entertainment, screenwriter/director Gigi Gaston is now
well on her way to becoming one of the most sought after
writer/filmmakers in the business. Last year she directed
her first feature, The Cream Will Rise,
a dark, surprising documentary about controversial
singer/songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins, which has been
screened at film festivals around the country receiving
excellent reviews. This led to Gaston's directing her
first music video -- Olivia Newton John's updated version
of her hit song "I Honestly Love You." When
Gaston was sixteen, director George Cukor, a family
friend, encouraged her to pursue an acting career; she
was never able to commit to acting because she already
knew she wanted to write and direct. However, as a
teenager she did pursue a career as an Olympic athlete,
becoming a champion jump rider, and later used this
experience as the basis for her first screenplay. After
teaching herself the fundamentals of writing from Syd
Field's book "Screenplay," Gaston wrote "Like
A Lady," in 1988, in between jumping
events. This autobiographical story is about a tomboy
Olympic athlete, who asks a drag-queen to teach her how
to "act like a lady."

Gaston
will executive produce Mockingbird, her
adaptation of Walter Tevis's science-fiction novel about
a love triangle in a drug-ridden future, which
Oscar-winner Steve Tisch will produce. Unreliably
Yours, a wild comedy which has been sold to
Initial Entertainment, shows the other side of Gaston's
sensibility: it's about a wife and mistress who hate each
other, but join forces to sabotage the man they share
when he goes on a trip to Mexico with their new
"replacement."

If Frank
Capra's films sharpened Gaston's sense of screen comedy
when she was growing up, her heart belonged to historical
epics like Dr. Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia and Greta
Garbo's Queen Christina. Madame Lupescu, which she first
brought to Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment, is her
first opportunity to write a story which draws on her
fascination with historical subject matter. A drama set
in Romania between 1900 and 1940, Madame Lupescu tells
the story of crown Prince Carol II of Romania - monarch
in an anti-Semitic country - who abdicated his trhone for
the love of Magda Lupesco, a Jewish commoner. This summer
Gaston will travel to Romania to extensively research
this project.

A native
of Greenwich, Connecticut, Gaston began her athletic
career when she began riding at age three. She moved to
Los Angeles with her family five years later, and in 1976
became the youngest rider to win an Olympic competition
at the Washington International Horse Show. A top
contender for the U.S. Olympic team in 1980, she spent
years training during winter sessions for the event, but
suffered disappointment when President Carter announced
that the U.S. would boycott the Games in 1980. After
winning every top award an amateur jumper can win, Gaston
retired in 1983, but made a "comeback"
appearance at the L.A. Forum in 1989, emerging as a
ranked champion in every division.